Episode 6: The Great Silence

ext. THE MOON’S MEADOW

We return to the Moon’s Meadow, with Alice, the Pale Horse and the Moon in conversation. The Pale Horse stands with its broad back to Alice. The Moon, warm and placid as ever, remains overheard. The Pale Horse huffs, closing its eyes. It is resigned to the inevitable, tiresome conversation that comes with the territory of an orientation for a new arrival, and Alice is as new as they come.

THE MOON
You are right. Pale Horse wants to go back to the Tower. He thought you had the strength to will a return on the first try.

PALE HORSE
But you were useless.

THE MOON
Hush, Horse. You had your chance to tell your own story.

The Pale Horse leers upward for a moment, thinks better of it and returns to gazing nowhere in particular. The Moon glows a soft blue, now, rather than yellow. Its light bleeds out across the purple sky, and the golden stars twinkle and spin as the cool blanket washes over them.

Alice seats herself back on the hill, cross-legged. She looks up, expectantly.

THE MOON
Very good. Now we can begin.

The Moon inhales and exhales, blowing a puff of air across the sky that sweeps the stars aside leaving an empty canvas. When the stars return they take the form of a horse.

THE MOON
Every horse needs two things to be truly fulfilled- a rider and a destination.

The Star Horse begins to gallop. A faint outline of a hooded rider appears. A tower appears at a distance in the sky picture.

THE MOON
Lose the rider, you lose your destination. And a horse without a rider or a destination is little more than a wild animal.

The rider disappears from the star picture. The star horse begins to buck wildly. Then too the tower disappears.

THE MOON
Did the rider lose the destination? Or did the horse lose its rider?

A pause. Alice ponders, replies.

ALICE
Or did the rider lose its horse?

THE MOON
Oh? Do you think someone would reject so useful a tool as a horse?

ALICE
(reflective)
Powerful people throw away what isn’t immediately useful to them.

THE MOON
Very perceptive. Expected of The Fool. It is both as you said and yet, not. There was a rejection. Be it the rider of the horse, or the horse of the rider-

ALICE
Or the rider of the destination!

THE MOON
(nodding)
But not the horse?

ALICE
The Pale Horse wants the Tower. The Tower was the destination. Therefore, the Pale Horse couldn’t have rejected the destination. Its rider did. And in turn, rejected the Pale Horse. But who was the rider--

THE MOON
(solemnly)
That is a part of the story I cannot share. It is the Pale Horse’s secret to share. But you were right on all other counts. The Pale Horse wants to return to the tower. The Tower has the power to restore what’s been lost, to fill old silences. The Pale Horse lacks a rider, and the Tower has the strength to fill that void. But The Tower requires a key to enter- power, unfettered, unrestricted. It is a power the Pale Horse thought you, Alice, might house. The Pale Horse, riderless, with only a notion of its destination, cannot enter alone. Perhaps it thought you might substitute for its lost rider. But both of you lacked strength.

ALICE
(jeering)
Ha! So you’re weak too!

PALE HORSE
We are both exceedingly weak. I was wrong about you, about us both. The Tower will not suffer reversed or fallen cards to enter its gates. Had the Moon not saved us, we would almost certainly have been pushed straight back into the heaving jaws of the World Machine.

THE MOON
(kindly chiding)
You’re both welcome, by the way.

ALICE
(to herself)
The Tower has the power to restore what’s been lost, to fill old silences…
(to The Moon)
The creature that chased us here from my world- that was The World Machine?

At this there is a silence. A quiet breeze quivers the blades of grass, the petals of flowers, edges through the branches of small trees. The stars themselves go dim for a moment, fearful of being noticed.

THE MOON
The manifestation of The Real made flesh in our world, Arcana, yes. The World Machine.

Reluctantly, stars take form in the sky and show a large, many tentacled monster that whips about in the sky.

THE MOON
Sealed away to wander harmlessly within The Real by The Magician and the High Priestess of Arcana, it has spent a lifetime quietly destroying the lives of the weak, devouring the dreams of the fearful in your world. However, a condition of its banishment is that every so often it would be allowed passage on The Lost Highway, the transit from The Real to Arcana. It has a limited time that it would attempt to visit its unquelled wrath on our world before returning to The Real.

ALICE
So if we just wait it will go back?

THE MOON
Perhaps, if it had not sighted the offramps. But…foolishness has led it straight to the Tower. It now has realized its target. If it seizes the Tower then it will harness the powers of change to reduce this world to the ashes of memory- and harness its energy to become an unstoppable force of chaos and destruction. But…perhaps it fails and is returned to the Real. Maybe you go back, someday, too. But if you do, the World Machine will always be waiting for you at the gates- and it will destroy you. There will be no escape.

ALICE
So if we wait around, it could destroy this entire world. And if it doesn’t, it’ll just go back to my world and destroy me when I go back.

THE MOON
(nodding)
And if not you, then it will almost certainly continue to devour the rest of the place you once called home.

ALICE
Oh, I don’t care so much about that. It wasn’t much of a home. But I also don’t want to die. At least, not like that. So I guess I better do something.

PALE HORSE
(sighs)
How noble…

ALICE
(ignoring)
So the World Machine is not here?

PALE HORSE
It is sealed upon the Lost Highway, the bridge between the Real and Arcana. When it finds the right offramp- it will be upon us.

Alice springs to her feet, starts to walk down the hill.

ALICE
Welp, that’s all there is to know!

THE MOON
(bemused)
And where are you going?

ALICE
The Tower.

THE MOON
And I don’t suppose you’d like to hear more about The Tower, its history, its power to grant wishes or, maybe, HOW it might help us stop The World Machine?

ALICE
Nope. I’m good. It’s a Tower. It’s tall. It’s on fire. It doesn’t want me in it. So I’m going to find it and climb it and get my wish or whatever.

PALE HORSE
(sharply)
How did you know you’d be granted a wish?

THE MOON
(still amused)
The intuition of the Fool knows no bounds. And tell me, Dear Alice, what wish do you have?

Alice gazes upward, stopping for a moment. Her hand goes to her bony wrist, instinctively, a move she will replicate time and time again in moments of discomfort. Her fingers pass between the thin ulnar and radial, tiny blue veins wiring just beneath the skin. Her thumbnail passes through the sharp grooves- canyon-esque scars from a different world, a different attempt at transit and escape, both less and more real than her current destination. A gouging, grasping attempt, an acknowledgement of a dead end, the last service station at the beginning of a long, endless desert that one could never hope to cross on just one tank of gas. Her own Lost Highway of oxygen starved blood and half-promises of silence.

ALICE
(looking down, quietly)
There’s a Great Silence. I’ve heard it all my life, if you can really say it’s possible to hear a silence. But I’m going to find it- and take the whole world with me. You. The Horse. The flowers and the grass and the stars. The Tower. The World Machine. All of it. And then, when there’s nothing left, I’ll take me too. And then there will be a Great, Big, Industrial-Strength, Military-Grade Silence. No looking back. No looking forward. No beginning or end. Just quiet dark. It’s what I’ve always wanted. What they always tried to reproduce in me with drugs and therapy and meditation and caffeinated drinks and long nights out on the town and work weeks with unpaid overtime but could never quite get right- they never got silence right- the most important part. Instead, life was always just a series a slow deaths, little, moment long funerals attended by no one. It was the opposite of the silence. It was…a pain. All I ever wanted was the silence. Well, the silence, and living forever, but there’s no use in living forever if there’s nothing worth spending your eternity with, so…a Great Silence it is. One last real ending that no one can save me from. That’s what I want.

A dull creek of crickets. Firebugs flash beacons across the swaying blades of grass, a blue-white wind curls around the hill upon which Alice stands. The Moon has dimmed a bit, its crater eyes cradling small reservoirs of cloudy seawater that threaten to spill onto the terra below. The Pale Horse’s own eyes betray nothing, its ears flicking minutely with the soft scream of a distant cicada.

When The Moon speaks again, her voice is thick with uncharacteristic emotion.

THE MOON
Nothing surprises you, does it? A talking horse? A talking moon? Flowers sprouting from your innards? A burning tower? You just...go with everything. You speak your mind, casually wishing for the end of all things- not just for your end, but ours too. Remarkable.

ALICE
(turning back to the Moon, a forced brightening of her tone)
Yep. That's my style. Royalty must always be on their toes, after all. And if I am a Fool, which- still dubious of, by the way- then I've decided I shall be the Queen of Fools and a Harbinger of Silence. That’s my wish.

Alice turns to the flowers and grass of the meadow.

ALICE
(a faux regality)
Now make way for your queen.

And the grass and flowers bend to her in deference.

ALICE
(in wonder)
Well well.

Alice, pleased, quietly passes through them. After a few moments of her absence, the Pale Horse snorts.

THE PALE HORSE
Nonsense.

THE MOON
(calling after Alice)
And should we meet again, how should I address her highness?

ALICE
(distant, almost entirely removed from the hill now)
I don't care about names. But tonight, I feel like Alice suits me. Yeah. Call me Alice. If it changes, I'll let you know. Actually, make it THE Alice. Feels more abstract, like I'm more an idea than a person. It feels like the right mask to wear today.

And she continues down the meadow, leaving The Pale Horse beneath the Moon.

THE MOON
(to the Pale Horse)

So. Her card reveal showed a white carnation- the sure sign of The Fool. And The Alice has some intuitive Arcana control, allowing her to connect with the empathetic plant life that surrounds her. Interesting.

THE PALE HORSE
It may be a coincidence- but a dangerous coincidence, perhaps.

THE MOON
And she seeks a Great Silence, an end to all things, while simultaneously lacking the courage to simply court death. Does that sound familiar, Pale Horse? No wonder you have taken a liking to her.

The Pale Horse sighs, begins to trot down the meadow in the same direction as Alice.

THE PALE HORSE
Honestly, you're such a pain.

THE MOON
She won't be your lost rider, Pale Horse. Can't be, won't be.

THE PALE HORSE
My shame is no business of yours, Moon.

The Pale Horse continues after Alice as the Moon watches it leave.

THE MOON
(to herself)
And yet, you're not leaving her, are you, Pale Horse? A Fool has returned to Arcana, a new monster in our midst.

The stars behind her sparkle and twinkle with growing intensity, agreeing with her, as the scene fades out.